Posts by Kenneth Morris57

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the concept of "assemblage" in art, but not necessarily in the formal, museum sense. I mean the psychological aspect of it. You know, the idea that we can take these discarded, mundane, or even outright hostile objects from our past and stitch them together into something that actually makes sense of our present.

There is something deeply transformative about taking an object that was meant to signify something one way—maybe something meant to demean, or something that just felt "less than"—and physically rearranging it until it speaks a completely different language. It’s like a form of alchemy. You aren't just making "art"; you're performing a sort of exorcism on the items that used to carry heavy, negative weight.

I remember walking through a flea market a few years ago in a particularly old part of town. I saw this collection of old, rusted kitchen utensils and broken ceramic figurines. Most people saw junk. They saw things that had outlived their utility. But as I sat there looking at them, I started imagining them as components of a larger story. If you took that rusted whisk and paired it with a piece of silk or a cracked porcelain eye, the entire "vibe" shifts. It moves from being a story of decay to a story of reconstruction.

It makes me wonder about the sheer courage it takes to do this on a grand scale. To look at the artifacts of a period of history that was designed to be oppressive, and instead of throwing them away or hiding them in a basement, you bring them into the light. You use them as the literal building blocks for a new identity. It’s one thing to write a poem about overcoming struggle, but it’s a whole other level of intensity to take the very tools of that struggle and turn them into a monument of victory. It’s a way of saying, "You tried to use this to define me, but I am using it to define myself."

In a broader sense, I think we all do a version of this in our daily lives. We take the "scraps" of our experiences—the failures, the outdated traditions, the leftovers of old ways of thinking—and we try to assemble them into a cohesive sense of self. We are all, in a way, assemblage artists of our own identities. We pick up pieces from our ancestors, pieces from our mistakes, and pieces from our triumphs, and we try to make a collage that doesn't feel like it's falling apart at the seams.

But there’s a tension there, isn't there? There is a risk in using those old, heavy objects. If you aren't careful, the weight of the original object can overwhelm the new meaning you're trying to create. You can get swallowed by the history of the material. How do you find that balance between acknowledging where something came from and asserting what it has become? How do you ensure the "new" message isn't just a shadow of the old one?

I’ve been feeling like our current culture is struggling with this. We are surrounded by "objects" and "symbols" from the past that feel incredibly heavy, and there seems to be a massive, ongoing debate about whether we should preserve them, discard them, or—as I find most fascinating—repurpose them entirely to tell a new story.

Do you think it's more powerful to create something entirely new from scratch, or is there more profound meaning in taking something broken and making it beautiful again?

I’m not entirely sure if I picked the right title for this thread... but... anyway, let me just jump straight into the question: why on earth do some people switch up their roles when you're just, say, hanging out with friends?

They sit there and listen to you, totally willing to offer advice and everything, but then—and this is the part that gets me—they go and talk about your situation to someone else as if it isn't some deep, meaningful issue. It’s like they’re treating your life like some trivial little human-interest story in the local newspaper, you know? Just all sarcasm, jokes, and acting like they're somehow above it all!

I actually ended up calling out someone recently because they did the exact same thing to me... and well, they just shut down and got all huffy and offended... almost like I was the one in the wrong here, which, I don't know, doesn't seem right at all. I mean, obviously, I did confront them verbally, but I kept it really polite and civil since that's just how I was raised 😍

I find myself circling back to this topic quite a bit—mostly because I’ve always been a huge sports fan myself.
So, if I had to break down the whole fanbase situation, I’d probably group them into three rough categories, I guess.
1. Then you have the people who see being a fan as a sort of release valve. For them, it’s about the game, the banter in the stands, maybe grabbing a few drinks before or after the match... it’s just a way to blow off steam before heading back to their normal lives—you know, going to class, working their jobs, and all that. They tend to be more level-headed, more grown-up types, rather than just kids looking for trouble.
2. The second group is what I’d call those who decided being a hardcore fan was a "look." They probably watched *Terrace Casuals*, read up on some unwritten code of conduct, and basically "educated" themselves on how to act. They go out and buy the specific white sneakers, black tracksuits, or plaid caps just to fit in with a pack where they feel safe. It’s almost performative, really—they wander around trying to look tough, and I suppose some girls fall for it because they think it looks "cool." It's one of those weird, twisted values of the modern era, I guess. This group is mostly teenagers and kids—people still finding their footing, trying to figure out where they belong. It feels very much like a symptom of puberty and, well, insecurity.
3. And then there are the extremists. I’m talking about the actual neo-Nazis. These folks take it way beyond just cheering; they escalate from the previous groups to the point where they’re actually willing to send someone to the ER over their warped ideologies. I actually know a guy personally who fits this mold perfectly. He grew up without a mother, and his father was pretty abusive, basically trying to mold him into a little "soldier." Because of that, he was always wound up, constantly looking for a fight or gravitating toward that aggressive lifestyle. He even tried to go to college once, but he ended up dropping out because of his behavior and those radical beliefs. But—and this is the interesting part—this aggressive guy actually found a girlfriend who managed to calm him down so much we barely recognized him. All that talk about neo-Nazi nonsense just vanished for a while. But once they broke up, he went right back to the hate, the fighting, and all that stuff. So, I honestly believe these people are just folks who lacked love growing up, and now they’re trying to fill that void by seeking security within an aggressive pack.